35

Back at the hut, Holly slipped quietly off Pilot’s back. Kaydon tied him to a nearby tree and they both tiptoed barefoot to the caravan.

Holly rapped her knuckles softly on the window. She could hear snoring. ‘Brandon,’ she hissed. ‘Wake up!’ She knocked a little louder.

Kaydon tried the front doorhandle. ‘It’s open.’ He let himself in and fumbled around for a light switch.

‘This better be important,’ Brandon grumbled, pulling a pillow over his head.

‘What the hell?’ Jake complained. ‘Turn the light off!’

‘We need help,’ whispered Holly, squeezing through the door and placing herself between Kaydon and her brothers. ‘Please?’

‘Can’t it wait for morning?’ mumbled Brandon, still from under the pillow.

‘Can you log us in to propertydata dot com?’ asked Kaydon. ‘Where’s the computer?’

Brandon sat bolt upright. ‘Hey!’

Holly squished in behind the table and opened the laptop that Brandon had tethered to his smartphone.

‘Get out of that,’ said Brandon, leaping out of bed, and then scrambling for the sheet as he remembered he was buck naked.

‘Whoa, big fella!’ said Kaydon, holding up a hand to shield himself from the view.

Brandon wrapped the sheet around his waist and pushed himself into the bench seat next to Holly. He elbowed her along, took his place in front of the laptop and pushed the screen shut. He rested his forearm over it. ‘Not until you tell me what is going on.’

‘We need to know more about Mr Parker,’ said Holly. ‘We have less than twelve hours to stop the Glenvale deal going through.’

‘Why do we want to stop that? What do we care?’

Holly scrambled to explain Kaydon’s suspicions. ‘He’s interested in three properties and it just so happens that they all have old oil wells on them.’

‘So what?’ said Brandon. ‘All I want to do is go surfing. I couldn’t give a rat’s what happens to this place. Or the people that own it.’

‘Kaydon could lose his home.’

There was a high-pitched laugh from Jake’s bunk. ‘And we’re supposed to sympathise with that?’

Holly bowed her head and pushed her fingers into her forehead. ‘Please,’ she said in a voice that was barely audible. ‘Could you do this for me?’

She felt Kaydon’s hand on her back. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘It does matter,’ Holly insisted.

Jake eyed Kaydon suspiciously. ‘Thought you were with that Chrissy girl,’ he said.

‘That was just . . .’ – he stalled – ‘er, a business arrangement.’

‘Is Holly a business arrangement too?’ demanded Brandon.

‘No!’

‘I think you should leave.’ Brandon glared at Kaydon. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t trust you, your father, or his business mate. I want you to get out.’

‘Brandon, please,’ Holly begged.

‘Don’t you think these guys have messed us over enough, Holls?’ Brandon seemed to be winding up for a rant.

Out the window, Holly saw a light in the hut switch on.

Kaydon noticed it too. ‘It’s okay,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll leave.’

‘Kaydon, wait.’ Holly tugged at his arm as he shouldered the narrow door open.

‘It’s okay; this is not your problem.’ Kaydon pushed his way out of the door and moments later his horse clopped softly down the driveway and into the night.

Holly turned to her brothers. ‘Thanks for nothing.’

Brandon held up his hands.

‘I thought you just wanted to go home?’ said Jake.

‘We don’t have a home,’ said Holly. Her voice was tight. ‘Don’t you get it?’

She ran back to the hut with a storm system brewing in her heart. The centre was slow and calm but around that were strengthening winds and spiralling thunderstorms. A storm surge that had formed on the coast and been carried inland was ready to shatter into a billion tiny pieces.

Her mother was on the front steps, wearing an old singlet and a pair of pyjama pants. Her hair was loose. She held a bundle in one arm and a bottle of milk in the other, and Holly could see a tiny silver muzzle suckling on the teat. ‘What’s happening, babe?’

‘I don’t want to drive out another gate tomorrow,’ she rasped.

Her tears were like rain on the hard, dry ground. And though she willed them to stop, they poured out of her in a chaotic rush.

Her mother put an arm around her and led her inside.

‘I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,’ she sobbed.

‘It’s okay to feel, babe. It’s okay to hurt,’ said her mum gently.

Holly curled onto the couch and cried stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears. They blurred her eyes and sobs choked out of her throat. She let them flow, because she had lost any reason to hold them back or wipe them away.

While she lay wallowing in her misery, she heard her mother and father talking in muffled tones. One of them left the hut and knocked quietly on the caravan door.